Palin: I was Barred from Discussing Jeremiah Wright in '08 Campaign

Former GOP vice presidential candidate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said this week that she was barred from mentioning President Barack Obama's controversial pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, during the 2008 presidential contest.

"During the campaign running for VP I was banned from talking about Jeremiah Wright," Palin told Fox News on Friday. "Those elitists, those who are the brainiacs in the GOP machine running John McCain's campaign at the time, said that the media would eat us alive if we brought up these things.

"So what did that get us?" Palin asked. "That got us this kind of complacency and self-censoring of a campaign where we weren't allowed to tell the truth about who this kind of candidate was, Barack Obama. What it got us was a list of these scandals."

Palin was referring to such Obama scandals as the Internal Revenue Service singling out conservative, tea party, and religious groups for extra scrutiny in their applications for tax-exempt status; the deaths of four Americans in the attacks at the U.S. Consulate in Libya last Sept. 11; and the continued travails surrounding Obamacare.

On Thursday, Obama described such controversies as "phony scandals." He had been a member of Wright's church, Trinity United Church of Christ, for 20 years before resigning during the 2008 campaign. Wright has since retired from the church's pastorate.

"Couldn't talk about Obama's lack of knowledge and job experience and the things that he said — like America had 57 states, things like that," Palin told Fox. "These scandals are destroying America."

Former GOP vice presidential candidate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said this week that she was barred from mentioning President Barack Obama's controversial pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, during the 2008 presidential contest.